Bill Frezza is a 35-year veteran of the technology industry. After graduating from MIT with degrees in both science and engineering, Bill spent his early years at Bell Laboratories. Since then, he has worked as a product manager, salesman, marketer, entrepreneur, consultant, technology evangelist, and venture capitalist. Bill holds seven patents and has been investing in early-stage tech startups for the last 17 years as a partner in a venture capital firm. Since 2008, he has been writing weekly opinion columns for publications such as RealClearMarkets.com, Forbes.com, the Huffington Post and Bio-IT World and appeared regularly on TV and radio outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and WBAL. In 2011, he was a finalist for the Hoiles Prize for excellence in American journalism and in October 2013, he became the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s 2013-2014 Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow. In January 2014, Bill began hosting RealClear Radio Hour airing Saturdays on Boston’s WXKS 1200AM & WJMN 94.5FM-HD2.

Is Your Company Ready to Meet Its New Disability Hiring Quota?

Has the economy got you worried about reelection? Looking for clever ways to showcase your bona fides as a promoter of “fairness,” champion of the little guy, and scourge of big business? Want to fill the front pages with dumb pronouncements that distract voters from the real issues? Then don’t miss a chance to goad your opponents into taking a principled stand against intrusive government which your allies in the media can easily spin as being insensitive to the plight of the less fortunate.

The White House did such a boffo job firing up its base with its “heads I win, tails you lose” culture war initiative against the Catholic Church that it apparently decided to pick a new fight over the imposition of handicapped hiring quotas. Get ready for an onslaught of new regulations, litigation, intimidation, and selective enforcement, as the Obama administration works to transform the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits discrimination against the handicapped, into an affirmative action quota system.

Under changes proposed by Obama’s Labor Department, 7 percent of a company’s employees will soon have to qualify as disabled if the company hopes to continue doing business with the federal government. “What gets measured gets done,” Patricia Shiu, director of the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, told The Wall Street Journal. “And we’re in the business of getting things done.”

The proposed regulations would go well beyond the “reasonable accommodations” and workplace access requirements called for in the Americans with Disabilities Act. They would impose, for the first time, numerical reporting and hiring quotas on employers. And just to make sure hiring managers don’t fill these quotas with low-wage, make-work jobs that end up becoming just another cost of doing business with the federal government (all passed on to you, the taxpayer and consumer), DOL will monitor subsets of workers grouped by skills and wage rates to make sure the handicapped are evenly apportioned throughout an organization. Stay tuned for 2,000 pages of regulations describing exactly how this is supposed to work, burdening companies with hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional training and compliance costs.

But that’s not all. The original Rehabilitation and Americans with Disabilities Acts were constructed to prevent employment discrimination and expand public accommodation, so the list of qualifying disabilities was made both flexible and expansive. This encouraged a parade of plaintiffs to flesh out the law. Thanks to two decades of litigation, covered handicaps now include not just physical limitations that can be objectively observed or documented by a physician, but behavioral handicaps like alcoholism, drug addiction, depression, ADHD, dyslexia, emotional disturbance, and a panoply of mental illnesses.

Inverting the law by turning it into a quota system will have little impact if so many people are covered that it is relatively easy to comply. How hard will it be to take a survey of existing employees to show that at least 7 percent of them drink too much beer, smoke pot, get depressed, are allergic to peanuts, or have had the occasional panic attack, not to mention anger management problem? Heck, we already know that a third are obese, which is now considered a handicap, rather than a lifestyle choice.

Hence, regulators are considering an additional rule that at least 2 percent of a contractor’s workforce must be made up of the “severely disabled,” meaning total blindness, deafness, or missing limbs. Hopefully, it will be some time before we hear reports of a desperate job applicant chopping off a finger to land a job.

The reaction of the business community has been both predictable and impotent, painfully aware that they are being set up for another public relations fiasco. How are employers supposed to meet handicapped hiring quotas when other employment laws strictly forbid them from asking applicants if they are handicapped? Not to worry, says Labor apparatchik Shiu. Job seekers will be encouraged to voluntarily self-identify their handicaps. Now there’s a litigator’s dream come true! Every rejected applicant that checked the handicapped box would have cause to sue for discrimination.

You can’t make this stuff up. Or maybe you can if you’re running for reelection as President and have the Labor Department at your beck and call. And you can keep making stuff like this up all the way into November, proving an assertion recently making the rounds based on research done at Cornell University: that people aren’t smart enough for democracy to flourish. Ya think?

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

You wrote:”Under changes proposed by Obama’s Labor Department, 7 percent of a company’s employees will soon have to qualify as disabled if the company hopes to continue doing business with the federal government.”

No, that is not what the proposed rule says. According to what was written in the Federal Register “The proposed regulations would strengthen the affirmative action provisions, detailing specific actions a contractor must take to satisfy its obligations. They would also increase the contractor’s data collection obligations, and establish a utilization goal for individuals with disabilities to assist in measuring the effectiveness of the contractor’s affirmative action efforts.” Contractors need to set a goal of 7% employment of disabled workers and demonstrate that they making an bona fide effort to achieve that goal. If they cannot achieve that goal despite their efforts, they are not penalized.

I can’t believe how insesntive this author is about the nature of people with disabilities here in the United States and FORBES would allow such articles to be published.

US statictics on the employment of people with disabilities is a rather meager 17.6%. No, that is not the unemployment number, but the employment number. A good deal of those figures are Iraq and Afganistan war vetrans returning from duty with serious enough injuries to cause disfigurment and / or brain trauma to the entent that they are now quantified as disable.

So as companies benefit from lucrative fedral contracts, especially with the Department of Defense, they should consider employment of those individuals with disabilities who gave their lives for the economic prospertiy of the United States of America.

Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and related regulations for Federal contractors didn’t require federal contractors to report the numbers of individuals with disabilities employed. The new regulation requires this. You may not know, these business that sell services and products to the United States Government have been required to follow a number of federal regulations. The Americans with Disabilities Act does not provide affirmative action for individuals with disabilities seeking employment. Your article was somewhat correct indicating an expanded definition of disabilities. However it does not include those currently using drugs. It was expanded by congressional action not the President. Businesses that may most of their money from government contracts have always had requirements for the employment for all persons with disabilities. However making money off the government has not meant that government contractors have embraced policies, procedures and practices that support hiring individuals with disabilities. The purpose of the new regulations is to help with the employment of individuals with disabilities who are seeking economic self-sufficiency not government handouts. The changes proposed will go a long way in creating more opportunities for people with disabilities. Perhaps those with disabilities in the workforce will be more willing to identify themselves to their employers now that there is an incentive for both the employer and the employee.

I’m trying to understand if Mr. Frezza was once growled at by a guide dog, or if his limo got a flat tire from running over a wheelchair, or if he thought a deaf person was signing something offensive to him. It must be something, right? I mean, surely no one exposes such mean-spirited ignorance to public ridicule without a good reason.

Aside from getting just about everything wrong about the nature of disabilities and the proposed regulations — especially the political motivations — he does what every Gucci Neanderthal does: ignores the real issue. What is your solution to the severe unemployment problem faced by people with disabilities? If you had brought an idea to the table instead of beating on it with your impatient silver spoon sense of entitlement, we might have some reason to seek common ground.

But we’re not after the same thing at all, are we? The Department of Labor wants to solve a social problem that costs taxpayers, families, and businesses billions of dollars a year in lost economic opportunity; you want to argue that somehow government intervention is unnecessary. But the free market has never addressed this issue. Frankly, I don’t expect it to; employers have to pursue their own best interests. On the other hand, I do expect my government to require employers to do what’s best for society overall, especially in a context like this one.

And let’s keep in mind that we’re not just talking about any employers here — these are businesses that are looking for government contracts. Is the government not to be allowed to prefer to do business on its own terms?

The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities writes in response to the column by Bill Frezza in your March 6th edition titled “Is Your Company Ready to Meet Its New Disability Hiring Quota?” CCD is a coalition of more than 100 national disability rights, advocacy, consumer and provider organizations advocating on behalf of the nation’s more than 54 million people with disabilities.

This column is so rife with inaccuracies, distortions and outdated views about the value of people with disabilities in the workplace that it begs for a response. Let us start with some of the more obvious errors in the piece. Mr. Frezza claims that regulations proposed by the Department of Labor will “impose, for the first time, numerical reporting and hiring quotas on employers.” That is wrong. Companies seeking federal government contracts have, for decades, been required to set goals for and report on their recruitment and hiring of women and minorities.

The regulations in question seek to strengthen existing obligations by federal contractors to recruit and hire qualified individuals with disabilities. Sadly, the workforce participation rate for working age people with disabilities is 33 percent compared to 73 percent for those without a disability. While many public policies present barriers to work for people with disabilities, the ADA has yet to overcome entrenched resistance to employment of people with disabilities. For too long, employers have felt little urgency to employ people with disabilities. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data indicate that employers have had a 95% success rate in contesting claims of employment discrimination under the ADA. Additionally, as noted above, federal contractors have been required for years to meet goals for employing women and minorities yet similar goals have not been required for employing people with disabilities. On the other hand, according to a 2011 Society for Human Resource Management survey, forty four percent of companies responding said that they include people with disabilities in their organization’s diversity plans and policies. We do not believe it is asking too much for companies taking taxpayer dollars in the form of government contracts – and which employ almost one fifth of all individuals in this nation’s economy — to follow this lead with respect to their own workforces.

Mr. Frezza goes on to decry provisions in the proposed regulations that would establish a separate 2 percent target for recruitment and hiring of people with significant disabilities, meaning, in his words, “total blindness, deafness or missing limbs”. He is obviously unaware of companies like Walgreen’s and Procter and Gamble that have established targets of ten percent or higher for inclusion of people with disabilities in their workforce. He also suggests that such a target may compel a “desperate job applicant” to self-mutilate in order to obtain a job. This nation has been at war for over ten years. Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicate that workforce participation for veterans with significant disabilities is half that of veterans with no disability. Does Mr. Frezza view a veteran who lost his or her sight or limbs in service to our country as one of those “desperate job applicants” unworthy of consideration for federal contractor employment?

We recognize that columns such as Mr. Frezza’s are intended for a particular audience with a certain mindset. However, polemics such as this must not go unrefuted lest they continue to reinforce the kind of negative stereotypes that have for too long kept many individuals with disabilities out of the mainstream of American life.

We would be happy to meet with the Forbes editorial board to share information on disability law and the challenges to employment facing people with disabilities.

Did you even read the title of that article? The article says he cut off his foot to keep receiving unemployment benefits, not to get a job. He was offered work he didn’t like.

Get your facts straight if you want people to take you seriously. If you can’t read a news story properly, how are we expected to believe you have any pertinent insight in the issues of disability and employment?

The Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation (CSAVR) writes in response to your March 6th column titled “Is Your company Ready to Meet Its New Disability Hiring Quota”. CSAVR is a professional membership organization of the Administrators of the 80 public vocational rehabilitation (VR) programs. There are VR programs in every state, the territories and the District of Columbia. The VR program is operated under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, through a combination of federal and state funding. Public VR is designed to assist persons with disabilities to obtain or retain competitive employment. CSAVR believes it is essential for our country to employ the talents of all Americans. People with disabilities, including our Veterans, bring a range of talent and motivation to the workplace. While we do not agree with the views expressed in the column and recognize inaccuracies, we are in accord with Mr. Frezza to the extent that we want to assist employers to effectively do business. Our members and their programs do this every day by understanding our business customers and referring qualified and motivated candidates to meet their employment needs. The public VR program has assisted more than 18.2 million individuals with disabilities to prepare for, obtain and retain employment. These are competitive jobs, not make work employment, for individuals who move off of the public benefit systems to become contributing, tax paying members of our society.

The proposed regulations noted in the article will not impose quotas. The proposed rule addresses utilization goals for contractors of the federal government. It is unfortunate that this step needs to be taken; however, the workforce participation rate for working age persons with disabilities is 33% compared to 73% for those without a disability. Through various polls, surveys and other studies, both individuals and employers continue to identify the number one barrier as being attitudinal. It is not that the candidates don’t have the skills or don’t want to do the job or that the accommodation, if needed, is too expensive. It is the misperceptions around what a person with a disability can or can’t do. In fact, studies show that the majority of accommodations costs little or nothing. This was confirmed just last week by a panel of four private sector employment experts testifying before the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee. Unfortunately, these misperceptions are very often what we see portrayed in the media, like this column. It further perpetuates the stereotypes of who people with disabilities are and the talent that they can contribute to our workplace.

American employers need trained workers. Business owners continually say that they need workers that want to come to work , who will be productive and understand the essential requirements of employment. Our program provides such employees across the range of blue and white collar jobs. Our program is voluntary and individuals come for the training because they want to work or continue to work. They don’t want to live on benefits. Employees with disabilities demonstrate just as good or better productivity, attendance, work ethic and enthusiasm as their peers without disabilities.

Many large employers and companies such as Walgreen’s, Procter and Gamble, Safeway, the Hyatt and Lowe’s have recognized the value of this relatively untapped workforce. They have implemented strategies to attracted and retain employees with disabilities because hiring persons with disabilities results is good business. It is unfortunate that more employers have not yet realized the value of hiring persons with disabilities and are still caught up in the misperceptions and stereotypes some of which appear in the article in question. We believe the proposed regulations will result in a stronger economy as persons with disabilities are fully integrated into the workplace. We are all after the same objective – putting the right person in the right job at the right time. That right person may very well be a person with differing abilities. When we see beyond the label and recognize the skills and talents of individuals, the business, the employee and the public benefit. We know that for the people that VR assists in moving off programs such as Social Security, the return on investment is $7.00 for every dollar spent on services. Former SSA beneficiaries that were employed in 2010, will pay back the cost of their services in 2-4 years and will generate $828 million of savings to the Social Security Trust fund and the federal treasury. As a “recovering venture capitalist,” CSAVR is certain that you can understand why these efforts are so important to the individual, business and our country. Unfortunately, it sometimes requires legislation such as this to drive change in attitudes. Instead of perpetuating these stereotypes and attitudinal barriers, we all need to make well informed decisions and further tap this very underutilized talent pool of persons with disabilities as we continue to build jobs. John Connelly CSAVR

This contributor to Forbes, through his overt lack of understanding the presence of disability, its complexity and even a modest appreciation for respectful and informed language (exs; “the handicapped”, “the disabled”, etc.), makes it challenging to objectively read the piece and look for any depth or relevance to the impending changes to Section 503, the expanding definition of disability related to the ADA and Title I, and the opportunity that these seeming impositions represent for corporate cultures to begin giving more than lip service to the decades-long struggle for qualified candidates and professionals with disabilities in the labor force to attain even close to the employment rate of their peers without disabilities. This contribution is emblematic of the overall need for reeducation on Title I, the application of reasonable accommodations as a productivity tool vs. a hammer over the head of employers, and overall diversity and inclusion efforts to assist corporations – and more accurately the senior leadership in those structures – to embrace a more inclusive culture that values difference rather than fears it. But first things first, if the contributor hopes to be respected by any of the 50 plus million citizens in our nation who manage a disability he should bone up on respectful language when discussing the presence of disability. Here’s a great resource for the entire Fourth Estate – www.ncdj.org.

I have an MBA in Finance from a good Catholic university. I also have a BS in Management and 3 years of Electrical Engineering studies. I have worked in Finance, Tax and IT roles for RJR Nabisco, Nabisco, Kraft Foods and Deloitte & Touche. I am expert in financial data, financial modeling, Microsoft Office especially expert (guru) in Excel and MS Access.

I was laid off during shortly after the financial crisis of 2008-2009. I have applied to over 900 jobs online hand have had over 35 in-person interviews with companies like Citigroup, United Health, PSE&G, Bank of America, E&Y and KPMG. I prepare for each interview with a PowerPoint presentation of multiples slides detailing my qualifications for that specific position.

Despite being a triathlete and physically capable in almost every way, I suffer from cerebral palsy which affects my speech. Surely given my situation there needs to be a program such as OFCCP 503 to correct this out-of–balance wrong.